Morrisons has announced it is making a big change to its self-checkout tills following a review of how it uses the technology.

The supermarket says it “went a bit too far” with self-checkouts, chief executive Rami Baitiéh has revealed.

It means the supermarket will be "cutting back" the technology across some of its stores.

Baitiéh told The Telegraph that Morrisons is “reviewing the balance between self-checkouts and manned tills” and is removing some from stores after "installing too many".

He explained: “Morrisons went a bit too far with the self-checkout. This had the advantage of driving some productivity. However, some shoppers dislike it, mainly when they have a full trolley.”

The news comes as the supermarket carried out research on self-checkouts across its stores.

Baitiéh added: “We reviewed the whole estate and it appeared that 20 stores must balance the number of self-checkouts versus the number of tills.”

As an example, the chief executive shared that one store in Brough, Yorkshire had removed some of its self-checkouts and added four manned tills.

 

Asda adds more staff to manned checkouts

The move from Morrisons comes as Michael Gleeson, Asda’s chief financial officer, recently told The Telegraph that the supermarket believed self-checkout technology had "now reached its limit", revealing a £30 million investment into putting more of its staff on tills.  

Gleeson commented: “We have invested additional hours in manned checkouts and that’s been within the existing physical infrastructure [of the stores].

"It’s not more checkouts, it’s more colleagues on checkouts.”